


Into The Future

by VoiceOfNurse



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Death from Old Age, F/M, Goodbyes, Grief/Mourning, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 02:45:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10265885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VoiceOfNurse/pseuds/VoiceOfNurse
Summary: They never did get that dance.  In which Steve Rogers says goodbye.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So this just sort of happened. Granted, Civil War started it, but I was always a bit dissatisfied with how little Peggy's death was explored. I felt like it did her something of a disservice.

Somehow, Steve had always remembered dying differently. Easier. Certainly quicker. But then he never really had seen a person die of sheer old age. Wounds he’d seen; men blown to bits, still blinking in shock as their death caught up with them, illnesses too. Those he remembered all too well; the frailty of his mother’s hands had never quite left him, even though it was years ago now. 

This, though. This was something else. This was death in a time of medicine verging on magic; the final defeat in a society that refused to surrender until the very last second. This was witnessing the slow crawl of time eroding someone away, and having to wait and watch as it did its worst. 

“Heya, doll.” He normally only spoke twice, when he made these visits, to say hello and goodbye. At first conversation had been possible, then at the very least an exchange of words. Now, there was nothing left; no recognition, no expression, nothing but the slow agony of time. 

In his heart, he knew that Peggy was already dead. Truly, the Peggy he’d known had frozen with him in the ice, a single, perfect moment when a whole future had spooled out in front of them and then shattered like glass. He’d lost her then, as surely as she’d lost him. The Peggy he’d come back to was a different woman; she’d lived out a whole, good life while he’d slept. 

Steve’s Peggy had been a firecracker; all passion and defiance and sheer refusal to be bent into the shape society had cut out for her. She hadn’t been afraid to call him on his shit, or shoot at him had she felt it necessary. She was one of a kind, unashamed, and he had loved her for it. 

The Peggy he’d come back and found was an entirely different creature. Cut from the same cloth, similar, but never the same. It was like Steve’s Peggy had shouted out into the abyss for him, and this frail, old woman was the echo that remained long after she’d stopped searching. She still had her passion, of course, but it had long ago been tempered by age and experience. Peggy had learned to be a wife, a mother, and a grandmother in the time Steve had been gone; she’d grown and changed and evolved into something new, even as her body crumbled under the press of time. 

Steve, though, had stayed as he always was. He’d woken from his long, long sleep the same lost, hurting man that had fallen into it. He’d been filled with grief for Bucky; a grief that he soon found nobody left in the world even understood, because what had felt like moments for him had been decades for those who remained. Not that many remained at all. Certainly, it often felt like he was the only one who remembered. 

Peggy hadn’t really remembered, Steve thought morosely, as he traced the path of Peggy’s knuckles down to her palm. Her wedding ring was a hard slither of reality, a tactile demonstration of everything he’d missed. Steve swallowed, and swapped his grip to the right. 

For some reason, he’d expected her hands to be cold. The hands of the dying were supposed to be cold, surely, not warm and soft and alive like Peggy’s were. She looked intact, perfect, if faded with age; no wounds to mar her, no visible sign that the end was coming, even though the nurses had assured him that it couldn’t possibly be long. Perhaps it showed in the slackness of her face, the too shallow breaths that would occasionally rally into a volley of deep sighs before trailing off into quiet whispers again, but Steve struggled to see it. Maybe he just didn’t wnat to.

He’d never seen Peggy sleeping. They had never been intimate, despite what people had thought. There had been the war, his mission and her work; even if they had managed to progress that far, there would never have been time. They never even managed their dance, after all; it would have been foolish to try for more. This, though; this was probably as close to her as he had ever been, as close as anyone would ever be, watching as Peggy Carter finally surrendered. 

She hadn’t surrendered yet, though. Each time he visited he was sure it would be the last. He’d waited by the phone night after night, convinced every time it rang that  _ tonight, tonight is when it will happen _ , but the call had never come. He’d visited every morning after sleepless nights, spending hours watching for any sort of change before trying and failing to get on with his life for another day. 

Of course, this time he’d stayed, urged by the nurses who could see some indecipherable change that Steve was blind to. They had told him that it wouldn’t be long now, though how long ‘not long’ was nobody could say. He’d been watching her ever since, as though the force of his desire could help her eke out just a few more moments of life before she went and left him all alone. 

“I wish we’d had more time.” Steve hadn’t spoken for hours, and his voice had grown scratchy with disuse. He wasn’t even entirely sure that Peggy could hear him, but the pressure of silence had suddenly become too much. He’d had far too long alone with his thoughts already. “Not- not back then. I wouldn’t want to take your life away from you. You were happy, had a family, and that- that’s something to be proud of. I wouldn’t change that.” 

Peggy had, after all, lived a long and successful life. She’d been happy, and would be leaving a legacy that most of the great would be jealous of. Perhaps his loss had played a part in that; Steve didn’t know. If he was being totally honest with himself, he didn’t want to know. He already blamed himself for so much. 

“But if I could have come back sooner. Been there for you just for a little bit more. Maybe you could have told me about it, the life you lead, the things you saw. I think I would have liked that.” Of course, it had been too late by the time he’d found her. Peggy’s sharp mind had been dulled by age, her memories slipping away like dust on the wind. They’d managed to talk a little, and occasionally he’d caught a glimpse of the Peggy he remembered, but mostly it was like talking to an increasingly muddled stranger. 

What he wouldn’t have given for one last, real conversation. The chance to say he was sorry and to be heard. “I’m sorry I left you. We could have taken on the world together. Made a real difference. Not that you didn’t. You did more- so much- but- I would have been there with you. Maybe I could have made things easier for you.” 

Steve wasn’t good for much, he reasoned, as he cradled Peggy’s hand in his own. Her skin was like damp paper, shifting and fragile, barely covering her bones. He’d never felt stronger, or been more afraid of that strength. “I’m not a smart man, Peggy. Not like Bucky. Not like you. But- I could have helped you. You could have told me what to do, and I would have done it for you.

He trusted Peggy; he’d always trusted her to know what was right and wrong. They’d crashed together in a world of underhanded politics, spies and wargames, but never once had he feared her moral compass. His own had always been questionable; with Bucky as a false north and far too much unwavering stubbornness. Peggy had never wavered though, even when it had come to making the hard decisions. 

He could have followed her, Steve reasoned, to the very ends of the earth, and he never once would have held her values in question. He’d always wanted to believe in the honor of the army, that they were a force of  _ right  _ in a world gone wrong, but he had never been so stupid as to trust them wholeheartedly. They’d given Bucky up for dead, after all, while he and his company were held by HYDRA. Steve had given him up for dead as well… 

“We could have rescued Bucky together. If you hadn’t had to waste your time looking for me, maybe we could have found him. Howard Stark had the technology, but he didn’t know what he was looking for. Maybe if I’d still been around we could have done it together, like we did before.” They could have achieved so much, if Steve hadn’t given in to his selfishness and stayed on the plane. In that moment, when a heroic death had presented itself to him, it had seemed so  _ right _ ; the ultimate penance of failing Bucky. A sacrifice worthy of his friend in that it would save so many people, but not Steve. Steve hadn’t wanted to save himself, because he’d failed the person who mattered most. 

If only he’d known that not looking for a way out would be dooming his friend to decades of torment. Maybe it was the universe trying to tell him something in the only way that could penetrate Steve Rogers’ thick hide; by ripping a strip from Bucky and making it Steve’s fault. “I’m sorry I took the coward’s way out, and left you to deal with my mess on your own.” 

Peggy didn’t answer; she hadn’t spoken in weeks before her slow decline had morphed into this, the last slow creep towards the inevitable. It was probably the only reason why Steve was able to talk at all. “I could have found a way out. I think you knew that, I think you always knew that. Maybe you hated me for it, after, because you must have been able to work it out. I didn’t  _ have  _ to be in the plane when it went down, but I wanted to be. I didn’t look for another way, even when you begged me to. I was selfish, doing that to you. I even made you listen…” 

He could have turned the radio off, or kept silent; spared her his last moments, but he’d been afraid. He hadn’t felt strong enough to face the end without her. Bucky had screamed on the way down, but Steve had always known that had his friend been able to, he would have made Steve cover his ears and look away. Freed him from the living nightmare of reliving his failure every time he closed his eyes. 

“Did you hear it at night, Peg? Did you lay there in the dark and hear the plane go down? Did I do that to you?” Maybe he was thinking too much of himself. Peggy had continued the fight, braved the depths of a world that frightened Steve even now. She’d probably had far more on her mind that him, after a while. 

“If I did it I’m sorry. You never should have had to suffer because of me. I’m not worth it. Bucky though- it should have been me, instead of him. On the train. If I’d fallen instead he would- he would have managed. He was always stronger than me. He would have kept going. Found a way to get out of the plane. Then he would have come back to you. Maybe he’d have been your best guy.”

Steve could have died happy, knowing they were safe. Together. He could have tried to live, if it meant coming home to the both of them. “You’d have made a good lookin’ couple. Maybe I could have been godfather to your children. I think I’d have liked that.” He would have liked that; being forever in orbit of the two best things that had ever happened in his life. He could have surrendered himself to Peggy and Bucky’s good sense and been free for the first time in his miserable life. 

“You’d have set me free, doll.” 

For a moment, there was a catch in Peggy’s breath; the faint rattle that had plagued her for the last few hours becoming terrible for a second before settling back again. Steve found himself leaning close, fixated on her taking that next breath. Just one more, and then one more after that. Selfishly, he realised, he’d been trying to get her to hold on just a little longer for him, to draw out their parting for as long as he possibly could.

Peggy would have set him free, and here he was trapping her. Time had turned her body into a cage; taking the wits and strength that had been precious to her and leaving a broken, mourning shell behind. “Oh doll…” Maybe she’d been holding on for him, unwilling to leave when he so clearly needed her. The thought cut to the quick. 

Eyes wet, Steve slipped from his chair to rest his head on the mattress beside Peggy’s hand. On his knees before her, as he secretly felt he always should have been, he pressed a kiss to her fingers. “Don’t you go hanging on for me, now. They made me tough, remember? I can manage.” 

She was so frail; gaunt and weathered by age. Not the Peggy he remembered. Not the  _ real  _ Peggy anymore. “You let go for me now, okay? You’ve got a husband up there waiting for you, and the Commandos too. They’ll want a mission report, I’m sure, and they’ll need you to whip them into shape again after all this time off.” Soldiers, real soldiers, were taught how not to cry. They could carry the casket and fold the flag without breaking.

Of course, Steve had never been fit for a soldier, and he wept with Peggy’s hand cupped close against his cheek. “You let go now, doll. Go have that dance with someone who deserves it. Don’t go waiting on me any longer.” 

Steve’s life wasn’t a movie, so Peggy didn’t slip away then and there, but he thought perhaps his words made a difference, because by the time his eyes were dry and his knees were sore she was gone. He couldn’t even say when it had happened, only that her fingers had grown cool and the pauses in her breathing longer and longer. He’d listened to the flutter of her heart for a while, before sobbing had overtaken him, and once the storm had passed she’d left him.

He wanted to tell her to rest well, tell her goodnight, but there were no words left in him. For the longest time he just sat, thinking about nothing, until the small, warm hand of a nurse brought him back to himself. He stood stiffly, to attention, and didn’t really hear the quiet words of sorrow and comfort passed his way. 

Instead, Steve took one last look before turning around and doing what Peggy had always done. 

He stepped forwards into the future.

**Author's Note:**

> Kuods and comments are always super appreciated. Let me know what you think~


End file.
